ZKM

May 1, 2025

zkMIPS 1.0 is almost here - the momentum is building and the industry is starting to take notice. The ZKM team has been heads-down, hardcore building, ready for an explosive May. But April has still been a notable month, with new research releases on provers and hash circuits, and appearances across global events.

Development

zkMIPS 1.0 is near.

This release will bring the most advanced performance and architecture upgrades to date:

6–20x increased prover performance compared to zkMIPS 0.3
Integration of MIPS32r2, a fixed, efficient ISA that reduces circuit complexity and improves execution trace density
Migration to Plonky3, our next-gen proving backend
New optimizations: multiset hashing, chip decomposition, and high-efficiency precompiles
Designed for real-world use: powering GOAT Network (Bitcoin L2), proving Ethereum blocks (via Ethproofs), and upcoming integrations with Metis, LazAI & more
Unlike zkVMs based on RISC-V, zkMIPS uses a stable, 20+ year standardized ISA, purpose-built for verifiable computation

zkMIPS 1.0 is ZKM’s biggest step to-date toward real-time, trust-minimized execution across blockchain ecosystems - starting with Bitcoin and Ethereum.

Research

This month, we continued delivering deep technical breakdowns of the ZKM Prover:

Arithmetic Operations and CPU Operations: Explore how arithmetic and CPU operations work in the ZKM Prover, and what that means for developers optimizing for performance → Read the article
Cross-Table Lookups: How the ZKM Prover uses CTLs to ensure consistency across execution layers - CPU, memory, arithmetic - enabling modular, scalable proofs → Read the article
Poseidon in STARK: A deep dive on PoseidonStark, our custom Poseidon hash implementation for STARKs. It covers round computations, constraint design, and witness generation. A practical reference for developers optimizing hash functions in ZK circuits → Read the article
Why MIPS?: In perhaps the standout piece of the month, this article explains why ZKM chose the road less traveled by building zkMIPS on MIPS32r2 instead of RISC-V. This deep dive explains how a richer, more mature instruction set leads to shorter traces, lower proof overhead, and a more performant zkVM → Read the article

*An Architectural Comparison between MIPS32r2 and RISC-V*

Global Events

April saw ZKM’s core team participate in multiple ZK gatherings around the world:

The ZK/AI Summit (Token2049, Dubai): ZKM Co-founder and Chief Scientist Ming Guo participated in multiple panels at House of ZK’s recent event in Dubai. The summit reached full capacity and received over 200k livestream views. Catch up on the action here → Watch now
Web3 Festival, Hong Kong: ZKM Developer Lead Stephen Duan joined the panel "The ZK Road to Enshrinement", where he shared how zkMIPS is expanding beyond EVM chains, unlocking cross-ecosystem verifiability and enabling trust-minimized computation → Watch now
zkVM Meetup (Shanghai): Stephen also gave a deep-dive into zkMIPS’ modular STARK-to-SNARK pipeline and why a fixed ISA like MIPS offers unmatched ZK performance, during the Shanghai zkVM meetup.
Zero-Knowledge & Bitcoin College Tour: Presenting to blockchain clubs from Yale, Princeton, Columbia, and NYU, Ming talked about ZKM’s Entangled Rollup Design and highlighted the role of zkMIPS in powering GOAT Network, the first Bitcoin Layer 2 to offer sustainable native yield. The recording will be available soon.

*Will Corcoran of the Ethereum Foundation giving a ZKM shoutout at the College Tour*

Ethproofs

In the first ever Ethproofs builders call, ZKM Developer Lead Stephen Duan joined Justin Drake and the Ethproofs community to discuss the upcoming zkMIPS 1.0 upgrade, sharing how zkMIPS 1.0 delivers a 6–20x performance boost over v0.3, and outlining ZKM's path toward real-time Ethereum block proving.

Justin expressed his excitement about the progress being made by ZKM, and rightfully so. The dark horse of the zkVM race is about to get much, much faster.

Looking Ahead

As our big zkVM upgrade is prepared for launch, May is shaping up to be the most exciting month in ZKM’s history:

Final performance benchmarks and public rollout of zkMIPS 1.0.
Expanded dev tutorials and precompiles.
Deeper integrations with Ethproofs - we’ll let the data do the talking.
More IRL events and workshops.

The future of verifiable computation is fast, flexible, and finally here.

Let’s build together.

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